I'm doing a couple of books where the first letter of the first word of the first paragraph of a chapter is an image. I've noticed, and it makes sense, that when resizing the font within the viewer the image does not change size.
However, I'm wondering how I might better place the image in relation to the paragraph/margins so that the image doesn't move around too much.
I use Word 2010, save as filtered web page, and within Calibre I convert to ePub.
Thanks

I've used images as drop caps in The Small House in Allington by Anthony Trollope in the MobileRead library. But I do my ebooks by hand, working directly on the HTML, so this may not be much use to you. I do think you will need to work directly on the HTML.

I've used images as drop caps in The Small House in Allington by Anthony Trollope in the MobileRead library. But I do my ebooks by hand, working directly on the HTML, so this may not be much use to you. I do think you will need to work directly on the HTML.

Be sure to insert a Alt tag with the letter, into the Image tag for those without Image support on their readers

I just want optimised text-flow-to-brain for maximum immersion, with minimal visual distractions. I have zero interest in seeing fancy layout tricks, even it that is how some "books" are still laid out

But I'm happy to tweak /zap that stuff myself in my copy before reading, as no-one else will be reading that copy.

I still think 1st character images are a no-no though, because the can't scale & because the trend is that newer readers will read on smaller & smaller devices

theducks,
I agree that books should look like books, but they should do so in the most hardware / software neutral manner possible. In that respect embedding a font which can be re-sized and re-flowed versus an image which cannot, the font is the "best practice".

The next image pet peeve being colored (including b&w), rather than invisible, backgrounds.

Thanks everyone for your input. I think my originally message could have been a little bit clearer. My capital letter had artwork around it therefore my need. I realize this doesn't work for people who read from a "normal"-sized cell phone but that is not my intent.

For a hardcore person who is producing ebooks, or converting to ebook, Alex's suggestion is the best way to go, I think. In my case I found out what I needed to do is create 2 "soft" returns in Word, wrap the text "tight", and then use "0" as the absolute horizontal position to the right of the margin and "0" as the absolute veritcal position below the paragraph.